A Fair Shake?

With Hillary Clinton currently under fire for kicking a dog in Iowa and telling some kid that he wasn't good at sports in New Hampshire, the normally conservative Chicago Sun Times has an interesting piece about how she can't seem to get a fair shake in the media.

“Someone said the other day that Washington may now have reached the state-of-the-art point of having a cover-up without a crime,” pronounced the Washington Post. By failing to come clean, Hillary had managed “to make it appear as if the Clintons had something to hide.” “These clumsy efforts at suppression are feckless and self-defeating,” thundered The New York Times. Hillary’s actions, the newspaper continued, “are swiftly draining away public trust in (her) integrity.” 

OK, I’m teasing. Both editorials appeared 21 years ago, in January 1994. They expressed outrage at Hillary Clinton’s turning over Whitewater documents to federal investigators rather than the press, which had conjured a make-believe scandal out of bogus reporting of a kind that’s since grown all too familiar in American journalism.

Hilarious!

Even more amusing...

Bottom line: When they start talking about narratives and perceptions, these would-be insiders, they’re talking about themselves.

Exactly right.

Prediction...

This has to be at least the fourth time the same crowd has predicted her imminent demise, if not her indictment and conviction. All based upon partisan leaks — this Trey Gowdy joker is nothing compared to Kenneth Starr’s leak-o-matic prosecutors — and upon presumed evidence in documents nobody’s yet seen. From the Rose Law Firm billing records to Benghazi, it’s the same old story: When the evidence finally emerges, it turns out that Hillary has been diligently coloring inside the lines all along.

I doubt that uncomfortable feeling in their brains (cognitive dissonance) will allow them to admit this, though. Expect more dogs kicked and little kids feelings hurt.

The Donald Trump Love Fest, The Hillary Clinton Hate Fest

The only news program I watch on the main news networks is Morning Joe. I'll always be a fan largely due to the guests they have on panel every day. Lately, however, it's been pretty frustrating to watch because they are absolutely in love with Donald Trump, letting him slide on nearly everything. The worst thing they let him get away with is his complete lack of specific policy points. Yeah, we know Trump has feelings about what should be done with our country but what are his action policies? He still hasn't answered that yet.

Mika and Joe shamelessly fawn over Donald Trump like two high school girls hoping to get asked to the formal. They might as well have a fucking hope chest on their set with Trump's head shot and lone candle burning next to it. Juxtaposed with this nauseating behavior is their absolute hated of Hillary Clinton. Critical of nearly everything that comes out of her mouth, Mika and Joe pout, pontificate and faux shake their heads at the "collapse" of Hillary Clinton. Facts don't really seem to matter as they discuss Hillary's ongoing email server problems.

Perhaps they should read Julian Epstein and Sam Sokol's recent piece in USA Today which leaves the emotion out of the equation. For example,

But a bad decision is not a crime. Using a personal email server for State Department work during Secretary Clinton’s tenure was not a crime; the statute requiring official email accounts for official business wasn’t even passed until 2014. And receiving or transmitting information that was not known to be classified at the time also was not a crime. This is true even if the information was mislabeled or misclassified. And reports that a larger number of emails are now under review don’t change this — the essential fact remains that there is no evidence that Secretary Clinton sent or received any email marked classified.

Key words being "no evidence." Everything Mika and Joe are talking about is pure speculation and innuendo. I wish they would knock it off and actually be critical thinkers for a change.

Stupid And Ugly

I was all set to write a piece about Donald Trump and how it's entirely possible that he could: a) win the GOP nomination and b) win the presidency. Of course, that's the emotional side of my brain working, not the rational and more cold side. It's being a cynic. He would not be able to break the Democratic wall of 246 given his comments about Hispanics and women that any Democratic nominee would win.

But Matt Taibbi's recent article in Rolling Stone more or less beat me to it. Quite accurately, he describes the Trump voter and more.

People are tired of rules and tired of having to pay lip service to decorum. They want to stop having to watch what they say and think and just get "crazy," as Thomas Friedman would put it. Trump's campaign is giving people permission to do just that. It's hard to say this word in conjunction with such a sexually unappealing person, but his message is a powerful aphrodisiac. Fuck everything, fuck everyone. Fuck immigrants and fuck their filthy lice-ridden kids. And fuck you if you don't like me saying so. 

Those of us who think polls and primaries and debates are any match for that are pretty naive. America has been trending stupid for a long time. Now the stupid wants out of its cage, and Trump is urging it on. There are a lot of ways this can go wrong, no matter who wins in 2016.

The cynic in me agrees with him yet I think he's putting this stuff out there to shock people into reality. Imagine how our country would be viewed around the world if Trump were president. We'd lose a great deal of respect and our enemies would run the table on someone so naive. In so many ways, Trump is the adolescent that is illustrative of the GOP base today.

A higher level analysis shows that the GOP is doing the same things to themselves they did in 2012. They are going as insane as insane dictates to win a primary filled with anger, hate filled fear mongers that are completely irrational. It didn't work in the general last election and it won't work now.

Off-Duty U.S. Marines Stop a Terrorist in France

A terrorist attack in France was thwarted by American marines who happened to be aboard a train:

Two heroic American men, unarmed and in civilian clothing, helped overpower a 26-year-old gunman armed with an automatic rifle, knife and razor blades who brazenly opened fire in a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris on Friday evening.

And somehow they did it all without guns.

Training and competence are far more important than having a gun. Had there been untrained, armed, Second-Amendment-quoting, trigger-happy "Oath-keepers" aboard instead, half the train could have been shot up.

More guns do not make us safer. Quick-thinking and heroic people do.

Professional Opinions

If Guys Said What Donald Trump Says

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAHHAHAHAHHAAA!!!!!

Armed 'Patriot' Guarding 'Muslim-Free' Gun Store Accidentally Shoots Himself

Here's to hoping a whole lot more of armed "patriots" and "oathkeepers" shoot themselves

They Want Planned Parenthood Defunded

More Blood On Their Hands

Take a look at these hearses...

That's one for each of the eight people killed by David Conley in Houston last week. Despite the fact that Conley had a history of domestic violence, he was still able to obtain a gun. How?

He was able to purchase the gun online.

Had Manchin-Toomey been passed in 2013, all 8 of these people would still be alive. So would others. If you advocate for gun rights and against universal background checks, these deaths are your responsibility. Their blood is on your hands.

And you need to be put away.

Victim George Zimmerman Goes Full On White Supremacist!

Victim George Zimmerman has finally decided to throw his lot in with like minded individuals in the Gun Cult. Remember the gun store in Florida that declared a "Muslim Free" policy? Well, ol' Georgie has painted them a little Confederate flag to auction off.  Make sure you check out the video in the link. What an excellent illustration of the Gun Cult!

Although, I am still wondering if they understand that by vigorously fighting for looser gun laws, they are, in fact, helping the very Muslims they purport to be against acquire more weapons. Don't they realize how much they have in common with Islamic extremists?

Maybe the could just hug it out:)

Frank Zappa Long Ago Predicted Where The GOP Would Be Today

Frank Zappa Sees the Future of the Republican Party in 1986
Frank Zappa Sees the Future of the Republican Party in 1986THE SOURCE for this videohttp://youtu.be/WmhjyB3QfEg
Posted by Roger A Summers on Wednesday, December 17, 2014

The Problem We All Live With

Right now, all sorts of people are trying to rethink and reinvent education, to get poor minority kids performing as well as white kids. But there's one thing nobody tries anymore, despite lots of evidence that it works: desegregation. Nikole Hannah-Jones looks at a district that, not long ago, accidentally launched a desegregation program...

Southern Politics

I've been visiting family in Southern Illinois and Missouri for the past few days and it's always amusing to discuss politics with them. Both of my mom's sisters love Donald Trump. Interestingly, the cite the same reasons as many other conservatives have cited. He says what he thinks, he's not a career politician, he'd be tough with China (that's a big deal down in these parts...you know, those crafty Chinks), and he'd fix our country's financial woes because he's a good businessman.

Politics must be the only field where a good chunk of the country doesn't want specialists in that field running the show. Think about this for a minute...would you want an electrician doing your plumbing? How about a lawyer building your house? So, the least of us that is experienced in government should get the nod. Yeah, that sounds like a whole bunch of adolescent nonsense to me. If you are one of these people that is bent out of shape about career politicians, why don't you put your put your time where your mouth is and run for office yourself? Or support someone with a like minded ideology? Otherwise, get over the fact that you didn't succeed in life and someone else (a politician) did.

I can report some good news from the Show Me State. One of my aunts finally gave in and enrolled in the Affordable Care Act. My mom and I kept telling her that she would save a ton of money if she did but she didn't believe us...because Obama. Cognitive dissonance finally gave way to the reality of a premium drop from $800 a month to $100 a month. They get to keep their own doctor (hee hee) and actually have better coverage.

Recent polls show the rest of America is catching up as well. Funny how reality works...

The Real Reason Conservatives Oppose the Iran Deal? Oil!

The news is full of stories of economic woe in oil-producing states. From North Dakota:

The benchmark crude price has declined to $42 per barrel, after rallying in June to $60. North Dakota’s crude oil trades at a discount to the Oklahoma benchmark because of the higher cost of shipping most of it by rail. Helms said Friday’s North Dakota wellhead price estimate was $28.50 a barrel, down nearly $11 from last month.

From Texas:

“People didn’t have to work anymore [during the height of the fracking boom],” said Elliott Skloss, a sign maker for the county road and bridge department. “Now they’ll have to work or panhandle if the oil price doesn’t go back up.” His family farms had five oil and gas wells that earned monthly checks worth $50,000 just a year ago, but they now earn one-tenth as much because of the decline in prices and well production. 

From Alaska:

The result, historians and economists say, is beyond the experience of this state, or probably any other in modern times: more than half of the tax base — predicated on crude oil selling at around $110 a barrel — is simply gone in the whirlwind of $50 oil, as though it never existed. A spending plan of $6.1 billion for 2015, passed by the Legislature last year, will fall $3.5 billion short, or more, if oil prices keep falling. Alaska collects no state sales or income taxes to pick up the slack; a savings fund from past oil earnings will help, but it cannot fully fill the gap either. 

If the Iran nuclear deal goes through, the sanctions that keep Iranian oil off the world market will be lifted. Iranian oil will flood the market and oil prices will plummet to even lower levels. Oil industry analysts are predicting major savings:

"Once we get past Labor Day, we should see gas falling by 10 to 15 cents a month," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst with the Oil Price Information Service. "By December a lot of places are going to see gasoline at $2 or less."

Remember Sarah Palin's salacious "Drill, baby, drill!" innuendo? Michelle Bachmann's "I'll bring back $2 gas" promise? Well, it's happening on Barack Obama's watch.

This is the real reason conservatives are opposed to the Iran nuclear deal. This is the real reason conservatives are opposed to renewable energy such as wind and solar power, which are quickly becoming cheaper than oil and natural gas even at historically low fossil fuel prices. This is the real reason conservatives oppose fuel economy and power plant emissions regulations, which save consumers money and and save lives.

The oil and pipeline billionaires dictate domestic and foreign policy to the Republican Party based on what's profitable for them, regardless of what's good for the economy and the environment.

Spock and Kirk Sound Off

The Beauty of The Free Market

Check out this fantastic piece on the decline of coal.

The overblown political rhetoric about the plan tends to obscure the market reality that the coal industry has been in steady decline for a decade, partly as a result of the natural gas boom, but mostly because consumers are demanding cleaner air and action on climate change. Communities across the U.S. have led the way in persuading utilities to close dirty old coal plants and transition to cleaner forms of energy.

Man, I love the free market!

Yet Another Affordable Care Act Lie Torpedoed

Conservatives spent a great deal of time assuring Americans that the Affordable Care Act's rules on health care for businesses would result in all sorts of problems ranging from less hiring to reduced hours.Three recent studies, including one from a conservative group the American Enterprise Institute, shows that this has not been the case.

So far, though, researchers say employers have not changed how they hire and schedule their workers in response to the law. "The data, to date, basically say that that hasn't happened, at least on aggregate basis -- that there really hasn't been nearly the change that some people were expecting," said Chris Ryan, a vice president at the payroll-management firm ADP.

Shocking, I know, that a prediction of doom and gloom from the right did not, in fact, come to pass. Ah well, reality has a well known liberal bias:)

A Call To The Private Sector On Inequality

Peter Georgescu has become another member of the one percent to call for action on the inequality in our country. This time, however, he's going directly to the private sector.

Who will be courageous enough to start the ball rolling? The most obvious choice is our government. But the current Congress has been paralyzed.

Paralyzed by ideological intransigence...

Gerogescu lays out the future quite nicely.

If inequality is not addressed, the income gap will most likely be resolved in one of two ways: by major social unrest or through oppressive taxes, such as the 80 percent tax rate on income over $500,000 suggested by Thomas Piketty, the French economist and author of the bestselling book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.”

I've said the the same thing many times on this site.

So what are the action items that the private sector can pursue?

First, invest in the actual value creators — the employees. Start compensating fairly, by which I mean a wage that enables employees to share amply in productivity increases and creative innovations.

Second, businesses must invest aggressively in their own operations, directing profit into productivity and innovation to boost real business performance. Today, too many corporations reduce investment in research and development and brand building. As a result, we see a general decline in the value of their brands and other assets. To make up for those declines and for anemic revenue, businesses buy back their stock (now at record levels), and thus artificially boost earnings per share.

Yep.

Will they do it?

The President Channels Zombie Politics

I wonder if the president reads Zombie Politics...

President Obama stands by comments linking Republicans to Iranian hard-liners 

“Just because Iranian hard-liners chant ‘Death to America’ does not mean that that’s what all Iranians believe,” Obama told students and faculty at the university. “In fact, it’s those hard-liners who are most comfortable with the status quo. It’s those hard-liners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal. They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus.”

Hee hee...

Was The American Civil War About Slavery?

Here is a great answer to that question...

Was the Civil War About Slavery?
New Video! "Was the Civil War About Slavery?"What caused the Civil War? Did the North care about abolishing slavery? Did the South secede because of slavery? Or was it about something else entirely...perhaps states' rights? Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, settles the debate once and for all.
Posted by Prager University on Monday, August 10, 2015